A few weeks ago, Julian Assange was riding high.

"The self-appointed paladin of uncomfortable truth had just whipped up a media storm in Washington," the Washington Post said. Assange had revealed "70,000 classified Pentagon documents that portrayed the US war in Afghanistan in a way often at odds with the official cheerleading. Further riling the intelligence bureaucracy, his WikiLeaks organization was promising that 13,000 more such documents had been leaked and would be made available soon."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, pictured, is free to leave Sweden after prosecutors said there was no arrest warrant against him for an alleged case of rape, according to one of his lawyers, file photo. [Agencies]

Now Assange is under fire for an alleged rape incident, and the timing has raised plenty of eyebrows. Was WikiLeaks' highest profile figure drawn into a sting as a way of splitting progressive support for the organization? According to various media reports, US counter-intelligence bureau documents have previously spoken of destroying WikiLeaks by attacking its existence as a "center of trust" for diverse groups of activists and whistleblowers.

Assange himself has stepped away from such notions, suggesting the allegations against him - he says he had sex with both women, but with their consent - could stem from personal conflicts.

"I never said the word CIA, I never said anyone was behind this," he told Swedish TV last week. "That doesn't mean that intelligence agencies are behind this, nor does it mean they are not behind it, nor does it mean once this has happened, for other reasons, that they are not capitalizing on it."

In fact, many people are capitalizing on it, fueling an Internet uproar. Wikileaks has no affiliation with Wikipedia, though the similar name frequently creates confusion.

"The rape charges are the last straw for some organizers of WikiLeaks, who are demanding that Julian Assange, the website's controversial point man, step aside," Philip Shenon writes at The Daily Beast.

"He's a classic Aussie in the sense that he's a bit of a male chauvinist," says Birgitta Jonsdottir, prominent WikiLeaks organizer, a parliamentarian in Iceland. She told The Daily Beast that she has encouraged Assange to step aside as WikiLeaks' public spokesman and give up his other management responsibilities, at least until after the criminal investigation is over.

"I really care very much for WikiLeaks and I do consider myself to be Julian's friend," she said. "But good friends are the people who tell you if your face is dirty. There should not be one person speaking for WikiLeaks. There should be many people."

Shenon writes that "it's becoming increasingly clear that an organization which aspiries to transparency and the high ideals of open information is going to have problems going forward if it continues to entertain an individual who lacks transparency and whose private life is alleged by his female accuses to be riddled with low ideals."

An anonymous leaker at WikiLeaks has been quoted saying that Assange had been resisting efforts over the last two weeks to push him off the public stage, and that his insistence on "staying in charge of everything" was creating "a mess for everyone" as the website prepares to release additional classified US military reports from Afghanistan. Internal protests directed at Assange, according to that report, resulted in a temporarily shutdown of the WikiLeaks website several days ago, nominally for mechanical reasons.

Jonsdottir suggested that the allegations may represent a cultural misunderstanding between Assange and the two women and that this may be a "classic romantic triangle."

"Julian is brilliant in many ways, but he doesn't have very good social skills," she said.

A police report obtained by the AP shows both women had met Assange in connection with a seminar he gave in Stockholm on Aug 14. The women filed their complaints together six days later.

The treatment of Assange has been disgraceful, leading international human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson said last week from London.

"Mr Assange may have been naive but he is not a criminal," Robertson said.